Some random owls near Fort Saskatchewan

After running a few errands in nearby Fort Saskatchewan late this afternoon, I was happily surprised to encounter a few Snowy Owls and a Northern Hawk-Owl along the roadside during my drive home. I took a few quick photos to convey the first and last impressions of the two species.

Three Snowies near Fort Saskatchewan

The charismatic Snowy Owl is staging a significant irruption into eastern North America this winter. In the Edmonton area, there hasn't been an especially high number of Snowies reported so far this winter as best I can judge.

Today I was surprised to encounter three birds during my 20 km drive to Fort Saskatchewan. Usually I'm fortunate to see a single bird on this trip.

Owls near Fort Saskatchewan

Since arriving in Alberta a few months ago we've seen more owls than we'd seen outside of province in the previous five years. It's been great! On Dec 1st we participated in a day-long owl prowl with about 20 cold-hardy members of the Edmonton Nature Club though the farmland around Fort Saskatchewan. Our sharp-eyed leader Gerald Romanchuk guided us to eight Snowy Owls. Most appeared to be hatch year birds.

I bravely snapped the first photo through our windshield while the Edmonton owl warriors were pummelled by howling north winds and snow pellets. Go warriors!

Since then, we've randomly encountered more than a dozen Snowies in the same area.

The plot of Snowy Owl sightings submitted to eBird this month reveals a widespread movement of birds into settled regions of southern Canada and the northern United States.

The winter owl highlight for us (so far) occurred at dusk on December 12th. While I was driving along a township road I caught a glimpse, barely, of something small and owl-like beside the road (see road view in the following photo). I wasn't especially excited because his happens to me so often. Sometimes I stop to investigate and it invariably turns out to be a snagged plastic bag, an old wasp nest, gall, burl or bunion - never an owl. Most often I just keep driving, because I'm already late for something. This time I was early (!) so I turned the vehicle around, parked and found myself gobsmacked to be looking into the disapproving eyes of a Boreal Owl. Very cool! I think I was very fortunate to find one sitting on such an exposed perch. The bird remained in that spot for the next hour, long enough for me to return with Martha. We haven't seen it since.

More reliable is a Great Horned owl that frequents our back yard.

There will be more owl content in the coming months as we've adopted a couple of Nocturnal Owl Survey routes near our home. Woo whoooOOO!